South Asia Bio-regionalism Working Group (August 2020- Present)
ICA is actively involved with supporting and promoting a new South Asia level Bioregionalism working group that questions and unsettles the dominant narrative around fixed and rigid political-administrative boundaries in the South Asian region.
The group intends to generate and strengthen the following:
- Knowledge creation and awareness of a bio-regionalist approach to democratic decision-making in South Asia. Understanding and highlighting traditional/local systems of decision making and their ecological connections; revitalising democracy by re-situating ecology in individuals’ lives.
- Advocacy to integrate a bioregionalism perspective into policy, governance, socio-ecological-political structures, and community thinking.
- People-to-people communication/collaborations across current political and administrative boundaries; efforts at envisioning, and working towards, the dissolving of porousness of current political and administrative boundaries where they are inappropriate or violative of bioregional principles, and their replacement by bioregional governance, for example – systems constituted around river basins that cut across current nation-state boundaries, as an ultimate goal.
- Support systems for communities, movements, and groups working on the ground.